Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 17 - The Garden of Death

“Yesterday, our guest fell asleep quickly,” she said with a slow smile. “The one who has so much he wants to talk about.”

“That is what happens when the body has been tense for a long time,” Irovar explained. “Do you like him?”

There was a slight expression of unease in her glance. “Yes. Does he resemble my father?”

“Not quite. Your father had hair like gold and was probably also slightly more light-hearted by nature. Apart from that, you can tell that they’re related.”

“He seems a nice, reliable person.”

“I think so too.”

Shira hesitated once more. The fine, delicate hand took hold of the fishing tackle that made it look red, grubby and coarse. “We resemble each other somehow. We’re protected ...”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. I believe that something protects this man. Just as it does me. Although I don’t know what it is. Grandpa, why am I not just like all the others? I’d like to know why!”

Irovar, who had only been listening with half an ear, woke up.

“Rubbish,” he said, his voice trembling. “Of course, you’re just like everybody else!”

“No, I’m not. My friends are getting married, and I’m walking around all by myself. I know that a boy and girl can like each other more – in a different way – than I like my friends. But I feel nothing but friendship; besides, nobody loves me boundlessly and passionately.”

“You’re still so young,” Irovar muttered, trying to sound convincing. “Your time will come. Just you wait and see!” He hoped she did not notice how muffled his voice sounded. They had reached land and he was trying to act as if to signal that he sounded tense because he was drawing the boat up on land. Shira jumped ashore.

“I don’t think my time will come,” she said. She took the tackle and he the fish; she walked so lightly beside him, with soft, gliding steps as if her feet hardly touched the ground. “Somehow, I’ve always been an outsider. When we were small, the other children sometimes seemed afraid of me. Grandpa, they would say that I was inhuman. Just because I was never hurt when we played games. I played more wildly than all the others, just to show that I could also get hurt.”

“And you could, believe me,” Irovar muttered. “Nobody had so many gashes on their knees and elbows as you!”

“But no serious damage.” Shira lighted up in a smile. “But you’re wrong. I can be hurt. Like when I jumped off the rock over there just so that they would accept me as one of them. While I soared through the air, I saw a shadow standing below me that seemed to wait for me. But when I landed, it was gone.”

Irovar turned pale. “Are you crazy? Don’t you understand that was Shama? After all, you have Taran-gai’s blood in your veins and he’s your god of death. Surely you know that!”

“Of course,” she said calmly because, like all Taran-gais, she found the thought of such mythic beings quite natural. “It proves that things can turn just as bad for me as for everybody else. Incidentally, I’ve seen him again since then.”

Irovar shook her. “When? When? Shira?”

“When I fell overboard and very nearly drowned. A big, black shadow glided over the water. It was like a giant human being. But then it disappeared.”

Her grandfather closed his eyes. Shira looked up, surprised to see the tense trembling about his mouth.

“They were right then,” he whispered. “They were right then! Even if I tried to trick myself into believing that it was nothing but a dream.”

“Who was right?” Shira asked. The other fishermen had stopped; they were gazing at them at a distance. The dew-wet grass steamed in the morning heat, and the camp was about to awake. Out of Irovar’s tent came a sleep-drugged Daniel, wondering where his hosts were. He walked in their direction and Irovar nodded to him before he answered Shira. That is to say, he seemed almost to be talking to himself.

“They said that Shama would be out looking for you. And then you challenge him! By jumping off a rock!”

“Who are ‘they’, Grandpa? Don’t look at me so strangely. Wake up! Who am I, in fact?”

Irovar pulled himself together. “Who are you? You’re my granddaughter. Your father was a foreigner. And your mother was probably not the sweetest person in the world, but she passed away the night you were born. Peace be with her! That’s all!”

“No, that’s not all! Now and then, a great anxiety seizes me, which I can’t explain. You know more than you want to admit, Grandpa!”

He sighed and started walking again. Daniel, who had taken a lot of the heavy tackle for them, walked next to them, listening discreetly.

Irovar was a lover of nature, and although he was very wise and worldly, his words were simple, but even so, Daniel did not understand everything, that was being said. So in his mind he reformulated the words, that Irovar and the others spoke into meaningful sentences – in the slightly academic style, that his father, Dan, had taught him in Uppsala. Everything that was later spoken by these foreign tribes in this account was first reconstructed in Daniel’s mind. It would be impossible to write everything precisely as they said it, partly because it would only be fractions of sentences, and partly because their use of language was so distant from our own that it would be a great effort to read. Their language was packed with allusions. They explained abstract ideas in terms of objects in nature, and you could say that their speech was a strange mixture of imagery and short phrases. Daniel, who was so proud that he had learned the language of the Samoyeds in advance, had to change his opinion. Vendel had not perhaps learned so much during his stay because he had mostly spoken Russian with Irovar.

Daniel soon noticed that Irovar and his granddaughter, Shira, were the best educated and the most cultivated people in the village. Of course, she had learned a lot from her grandfather, who was undoubtedly a wise and cunning old man. During their short conversation the evening before, Daniel had gained even more respect for him, and while they were trudging up from the sea in the early morning light, it dawned on him that he was waiting for the old man’s reply. He glanced quickly at Shira, but she was slightly more ethereal; he did not get quite the same feeling of rapport that he knew existed between him and the old man.

At last, Irovar had finished thinking and sighed once more.

“Yes, I know more,” he said. “I’m the only one who knows more, and yet even I don’t know enough! It’s still too early to say that I’ll tell you more, but come to me, Shira, when you sense that the time is right!”

She looked at him questioningly.

“I don’t think it will happen until you move to Taran-gai,” he continued. “Sooner or later, you’ll have to go there. Honestly! It could be that the time is now! I think that Daniel’s arrival has something to do with it, although I’m not sure I know in what way. I have two pieces of advice to give you. You’ll be led onto the path that you’ll walk. Don’t offer resistance, Shira! Second, don’t walk in the path of Shama any more! He’ll do everything to get hold of you, and you’ve already escaped him twice. He probably won’t give you any more chances.”

Shira bit her lip, pondering intently. “My course of life has been charted already then?”

“Only up to a point. After that, everything depends on your courage and on how much wisdom and vigilance you show. And on how I’ve brought you up – whether your thoughts have become as pure and good as I’ve tried to make them. If I’ve failed, there will be no salvation, either for you or for the people to whom you are united by bonds of blood.”